DANGEROUS IDEAS

when i was a young kid, a little catholic kid, i was told by my perfectly sweet shy mother what a shame it was that my friends, who were mostly protestant (along with a jew or two), would never get into heaven. i couldn't believe what she was saying and as was my habit i called her on it. but to her it was a matter of faith, and authority, and one did not question one's faith, or authority in general. she also believed in experts, believed they somehow had a direct link with the truth.

these are dangerous ideas. Us and Them is the most dangerous idea on the present planet earth and the world's only military superpower has just installed at the helm an Us and Them damagogue of epic proportions, who is surrounding himself with others just like him.

this does not bode well for anybody. it is way past time for people to stop rooting for themselves, in any guise, and start rooting for the survival of the planet.

BIAS

humans have frailties that make them vulnerable to extinction and one of the most problematic is confirmation bias. believing that your country, your religion, your city, state or region, your sex, color, generation, even your hockey team, is better than others is just another way of believing you are better than others. and that is a fundamental problem for the species. 

LATE TO THE PARTY

there is a fundamental struggle going on in america which i think could have been resolved about five hundred years ago; that is the struggle for cultural dominance between religion and the scientific method. this debate has been resolved most successfully in europe and parts of the east, and it leaves america deeply late to the party. 

this is dangerous; when the world's only military superpower is embedded in a fractured and still unevolved ethos it will be tempting for them to continue to enforce domination in world affairs by increasingly bellicose military means. 

this is an existential threat to them and the world entire. if americans cannot step up to the reality bar quickly, President Loser, the new demagogue of hate installed in the whitehouse, will have to be stopped by people outside its borders, and that is a threat to the planet of epic proportions.

GAMES PEOPLE PLAY

the people who live within the world of finance are addicted to a game. it is not a game of survival against the elements of the cosmos that are hostile to life, it is not a game of self-reliance or belonging in a global enterprise — what i would label the real games of life — more it is a game like a boardgame. i wish it weren't so, but i am afraid the tired old game they insist on continuing to play is the depression-era game of Monopoly, a game whose ideas and principles were long ago, at least morally, discredited. and like the game, this modern capitalist system will end just as surely as the game of Monopoly ends, and in precisely the same way, when one combatant has acquired all the capital and there is noone else left standing with anything to lose. 

and like people in all places through all time, when there is nothing left to lose, people get ugly.

PRESIDENT LOSER

mr trump is forgetting the first principle of elected office — try not to piss off the people. let's hope it continues. he is a dangerous fascist racist whose constituency is not now and has never been the people, except in the sense of whom to fool, his constituency is corporations and elites around the world.